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The Story Behind the Claim

Source: David A. Asiedu

The Story Behind the Claim
MarryRight Ghana

We’ve been wired for thousands of years to love and tell stories. It’s said there’s a child in all of us who loves stories. Statements of claim are stories. Calling them statements may be misleading us into writing them up without ‘story’. They’re stories told under slightly restrictive rules. But they’re still stories – short stories. And we have a choice between telling them in a simple, short and sweet style or telling them in a complicated, show-off manner.

Your writing tics will colour your statements of claim, no doubt. Many experienced lawyers even encourage junior lawyers to explore their tics; to pour their personalities into their legal writing. So your tics are your choice and your voice. Yes, you must follow the rules of procedure on drafting statements of claim. Beyond that, please give a good story.

It’s all good to take the elements of the claim, and to write them out in a chronological or logical fashion. But I’m here to suggest a further layer of planning to make your story behind the claim more engaging, relatable and coherent. Judges are the readers. Judges are human. Judges keep their head impartial until they come to their judgment. But who knows what warms the cockles of their heart from the start? A simple, good and powerful story will do that for most people. Judges are human, we’ve agreed. Judges may find their hearts quietly rooting for one combatant in the ‘fight’. If this will happen, let it be your combatant. Let it be through the engaging story you start by telling.

If you put aside matters of form (such as the title, parties, signature block, etc.) most stories behind a claim can be divided into four stages, namely: (i) the pre-problem stage; (ii) the problem stage; (iii) the injury stage; and (iv) the remedies stage. 

The Pre-Problem Stage (Happy Days)

Here, you’re describing the people in the story. You’re drawing the relations between the people (e.g. husband-wife, driver-pedestrian, bank-depositor, manufacturer-distributor, employer-employee, retailer-consumer, employer-contractor, stone-thrower-owner of glass house). You’re outlining the interactions these people had with one another. You’re showing the promises they made to each other. You’re detailing the things they had to do to or for each other, or what they should have avoided doing to keep the happy days.

This is a calm and pleasant scene. Things are going swimmingly. Or they’ve been planned to go smoothly. Sometimes the good times roll for a while.

You want your reader to be taken with the scene. It’s a scene of human life. Human interaction. If you’ve done it well, your reader should want this scene to lead to another happy scene, where everybody does what’s expected of them. If your reader feels that way, then you ‘have’ them. They would hate to see anybody disrupt the feel-good factor.

Whether your case is about employment, oil & gas, insurance, power production, lending and borrowing, construction or distribution agreements, you can write this stage in a simple style. Make it digestible. It’s just a summary of your story – a short story. Don’t overdo it. Don’t use unnecessary technical terms. Make your reader understand (and love) your story. If I didn’t say it well enough, make your ‘Happy Days’ scene lovable (or as close as law can get to that).

The Problem Stage (The Villain Interferes)

This is where things started going wrong. An over-speeding car. A red light jumped. A missed rent payment. A garage constructed too tiny. A leaking roof. A house with a broken window. The late delivery of seafood. The sale of expired goods. Significant mistakes in the construction of a block of flats which can’t be corrected. This is where you start showing (not telling, showing) the reader how your opponent is the villain.

You’re creating a clear link to a promise or an obligation you mentioned at the Pre-Problem stage. You’re still trying your best to avoid technical terms. But you’re trying to use powerful, visceral words to show how the villain has done your client dirty. 

Be direct. Be clear. Be thoughtful. Show the scale of the wrong the villain has done.

The Injury Stage (The Cruellest Cut)

You’re trying to remain ‘relatable’. You’re still recognising the reader’s human nature. The reader has been wronged before. They‘ve been hurt before. If they can relate to your story, then half of your work is done.

State the injury, injustice or loss in clear and simple terms. If necessary and if possible, amplify the injury with more visceral words. No matter the subject-matter (such as a big, syndicated loan to a company to build a power production plant) keep the injury relatable. Not everybody understands all the terms of a complicated lending arrangement. Not everybody understands how a construction agreement really works. But everybody understands the concept of a broken promise. Everybody understands how a broken promise to provide a cake for a wedding can ruin the wedding. Don’t make a broken promise in the story of the loan to the power-production company look more complicated than it needs to. It’s similar, in principle, to the undelivered wedding cake.

Scale the injury properly. Did the wrong lead to only one injury? Was there an unavoidable domino effect? Was an initial injury followed a few days later with more devastating loss? 

Quantify the cost of the injury (the loss) in a specific way if you can.

Did I say that your content should remain relatable?

The Remedies Stage (Make Me Whole Again)

This part of your story is unavoidably legal. It’s not even part of your story. It’s what you ask the judge to do for you after you have regaled or plied or cajoled them with your story. So I don’t offer any storytelling tips here. I offer other tips. First, for most remedies, the right order is to ask for a declaration and then a consequential order. But this is not the best way in every case. 

Also, the are many types of remedy, but they can usually be neatly bundled under declarations and orders. The declaration may draw from the common law or statute law or even equity. The orders may include damages, injunctions, specific performance etc. 

Obviously, there are many other elements to drafting a claim. Procedural rules. Who can sue. Who may be sued. The proper court to go before. The areas of the law and their underlying elements. I also recommend using two checklists from the start – an evidence checklist and a remedies checklist. Let me also namecheck rules of thumb such as (i) using tables for particulars or loads of information, and (ii)) using certain umbrella words (such as correspondence, furniture, clothes and vehicle) in certain circumstances. But all these are important enough to have their own separate discussion.

There you have it – the four stages of the (short) story behind the claim. Through each stage, you carefully manage how you develop an engaging and relatable story. A story to make your reader understand your case at first blush. A story to make their heart go out to you (subconsciously) even though their head remains neutral and impartial.